OpenAI’s Fidji Simo Is Taking Medical Leave Amid an Executive Shake-Up | EUROtoday

OpenAI introduced a main reorganization on Friday as the corporate’s CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, takes medical go away to concentrate on her well being. OpenAI president Greg Brockman will deal with the product groups in Simo’s absence. Simo’s earlier title was CEO of purposes.

Brad Lightcap, the chief working officer and considered one of Sam Altman’s high deputies, is transitioning to a “special projects” function. Kate Rouch, the chief advertising and marketing officer, is taking a go away of absence to concentrate on her well being. Rouch has been present process therapy for breast most cancers. When she returns, will probably be in “a different, more narrowly scoped role,” in line with a word Simo shared with OpenAI workers which was considered by WIRED.

“As I shared when I joined, I had a relapse of my neuroimmune condition a few weeks before starting the job,” Simo mentioned within the word which was despatched in OpenAI’s “core” Slack channel. “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster since, and the last month has been particularly rough health-wise. For my entire time here, I’ve postponed medical tests and new therapies to stay completely focused on the job and not miss a single day of work. I took time off for the first time two weeks before the break for some medical tests, and it’s now clear that I’ve pushed a little too far and I really need to try new interventions to stabilize my health.”

Simo is predicted to take “several weeks” of go away in line with her inner submit.

In his new function, Lightcap will likely be in control of the corporate’s forward-deployed engineers, which embed inside enterprise organizations and assist combine OpenAI’s expertise, amongst different duties.

OpenAI will start trying to find a brand new CMO, Simo mentioned. The firm can be on the lookout for a chief communications officer to switch Hannah Wong, who left her place in January. Chris Lehane has taken over because the chief of the communications workforce within the interim.

“We have a strong leadership team focused on our biggest priorities: advancing frontier research, growing our global user base of nearly 1 billion users, and powering enterprise use cases,” mentioned an OpenAI spokesperson in an announcement. “We’re well-positioned to keep executing with continuity and momentum.”

Simo joined OpenAI in August 2025, the place she took over lots of the firm’s consumer-facing merchandise, together with ChatGPT, Codex, and the social-video app Sora. She not too long ago shuttered the Sora app and informed workers that the corporate wanted to chop facet initiatives and refocus round its core merchandise.

The determination comes as OpenAI eyes an IPO as quickly as this 12 months. The firm not too long ago raised $122 billion within the largest funding around the tech business has ever seen, which valued the corporate at $852 billion.